God’s gifts wrapped up in plain brown packages

God's best treasured gifts are sometimes wrapped up in plain brown packages, and we can be offended with that when it is not what we expect. Once in a while, especially on weekday mornings, I do not necessarily put on preacher clothes when I go to the church to do something. I might wear one of my old pairs of Levis, my old tennis shoes and a sweatshirt. Once, coming back from the restroom, someone came in wanting something in the church and I said, Can I help you? My response to his question didn’t satisfy him, and he asked to speak to the minister. What he was saying was, If you were the minister, you sure wouldn’t look scroungy like you do. That attitude is an offence we have to watch for. I know we get the Word of God in reading the Scriptures, but there is also another way in which you get the Word of God and it can come as an offense to you. You see, we do not have prophets like Haggai now. I am not a prophet. Prophets received direct revelation from God and would speak it to the people but we have the words of the apostles and the prophets. There is a sense in which then really when you are in public worship Sunday after Sunday, you are not merely hearing a sermon. We are not just going through some sort of religious procedure as a part of worship, but we have the preaching of the Word, but through a a vessel of clay. And though it may be more or less well expressed, insofar as someone in the teaching office of the church is explaining and applying the Scriptures to your life, and they are doing it according to the intent of the Scriptures, that is the Word of God to you. It is the preached Word of God. You are not just hearing opinions or something like that. A preacher or teacher can be wrong, you have to check them by the written Word. But insofar as they explain and apply that Word of the Scriptures to you according to the intent of the Scriptures, that is the Word of God coming to you, and you are held accountable for it, so take heed what you hear—but you may be offended at that.

Someone could say, Oh, that is just stuff we do as a part of our religious routine. We have a sermon or something like that, and you may even be offended at the person who is the vehicle for the teaching or preaching and say, That guy is just a sinner like me, and you have that much right. Then you might say, That guy is not infallible; he's wrong sometimes, You’ve got that right too. You might say, “Well, that guy, in his personal relationships with me on some occasions, has said something to me that I have found offensive, and I didn't like it. You’ve probably got that right, too. But you see, you can not use the packaging the Word comes in as an excuse for evading the Word.¹

Dale Ralph Davis